Coming Sunday: Legal actions against TPD cost city $657,000

This weekend, exclusively in the Sunday Democrat and on Tallahassee.com, reporters Jennifer Portman and Jeffrey Burlew continue to look more deeply into use of force by Tallahassee police in the aftermath of the Christina West case.

Reports released this week in response to requests by the Tallahassee Democrat show the city has paid some $657,000 to settle legal claims involving the Tallahassee Police Department since 2009. Cases we examined focus on use of force, but the claims were filed for a wide range of reasons.

The total amount paid does not include the $2.4 million awarded to the parents of Rachel Hoffman, who was killed in 2008 when working with the department as a confidential informant in a drug sting that went wrong.

It also does not include any legal fees paid by the city to outside attorneys and represents just the amount paid in cases already settled.

Nearly half of the total paid, $300,000, was paid to the estate of one man. According to court documents, the man’s attorney said he was unarmed while shot to death. Documents show he was shot while trying to get away from police. He was wanted on out-of-state drug charges.

It also includes $25,000 paid to the owner of a dog shot to death. The dog was described by the plaintiff in court documents as gentle and passive.

There are a lot of problems with doing a story that looks at legal claims against police. Some are insoluble and simply must be acknowledged in an attempt to be as accurate and fair as possible.

To begin with there are the numbers: About 50 lawsuits have been filed in the last five years against the city involving the Tallahassee Police Department and 14 cases have been settled.

But what is normal or typical? That is hard to say and there are no easy comparisons.

National averages include departments as small as a single law enforcement officer and as large as thousands of officers. Some academic research I’ve looked at acknowledges that difficulty in doing comparisons.

But there are other important obstacles. Different departments operate in different environments and face different duties. Leon County Sheriff’s Office, for example, operates the county jail. Tallahassee Police do not have the type of issues associated with operating jails or housing prisoners.

Researchers say that legal cases against police departments in general have been on the rise for decades, in part because citizens in general have become more litigious and more aware of their legal rights.

In the West case, which was reported on around the world after the Democrat published a police dashboard video of her arrest on a DUI charge, she informed the officers involved of her intent to sue them in the midst of her arrest.

Her attorney has since formally notified the city of their intent to sue, saying police officers used excessive force and violated her civil rights during her arrest Aug. 10.

Since the Democrat released the video Sept. 10, two officers involved in West’s arrest were suspended and the chief of police, Dennis Jones, abruptly retired. A grand jury is reviewing the case to determine whether officers used excessive force during her arrest.

The Florida Police Benevolent Association has since defended the officers’ use of force that left West with a broken orbital bone, saying it was justified and said the officers would have been justified using additional force against West.

The PBA, the union that represents the police, has also criticized the Tallahassee Democrat and said it was severing its business relationship with the Democrat’s commercial printing division.

Share your thoughts

About The Author

You can send comments by clicking on Bob Gabordi’s blog on Tallahassee.com or Move.Tallahassee.com, e-mailing him at bgabordi@tallahassee.com, sending a private message on Tallahassee.com and Twitter @bgabordi. You can also find links to his blogs on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. His mailing address is Bob Gabordi, Executive Editor, Tallahassee Democrat, P.O. Box 990, Tallahassee, FL 32302. His telephone number is 850-599-2177.